Newsletter
for alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 20 of July 2019 No. 924
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Dear Friends,
I am copying the exchange on the occasion that 'Jan
Koenraadt' sent his memoires to Don for safekeeping and scanning.
This reminds me that a box with Terrence Ferreira´s
memorabilia has disappeared in Trinidad.
This box of trophies and other items was sent by Nigel
Boos for the future museum, that was promised but never developed at Mt. St.
Benedict.
Does no one remember where it is? Can you help? Nigel Boos is worried just as I am, since I
never received the promised photo help for the Circular
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idmitch@anguillanet.com
Jul 11 at 10:18 AM
Hi, Jan,
The only schoolbook I still have is my
Form 1 dictionary received as a prize for something or the other (circa
1958).
It has been preserved because I used it
to press the leaves and flowers I picked in the bushes at Mount.
They are still there between pages of
the dictionary.
We moved house from Trinidad to Jamaica
in 1961, then back to Trinidad, then back to Jamaica, then back to Trinidad,
then back to Jamaica, and finally on to London for law school.
Very little survived the moves.
Best,
Don
-----------------------------------------------------------------.
From: GEORGE
MICKIEWICZ <amickiew@att.net>
Sent: Thursday,
11 July 2019 07:34
We pretty much lost everything that we
had when we moved from Venezuela to the USA in 1963.
My mother was very sentimental and kept
a lot of memoirs which my father discarded before our move.
C’est la vie.
---------------------------------------------------------------------.
From: Jan Koenraadt
Sent: Thursday,
July 11, 2019 6:30 AM
Thanks a lot, Kaz,
Some is stuff I sent in the past, some
is additional.
Being glad I can deliver.
I am surprised to get so many hails :-)!
Greetings,
Jan Koenraadt '63-'67
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11-7-2019
Thank you, Jan, for adding to our MSB
Archives and 'Museum'.
Appreciate your kindness and generosity.
Ladislao will be extremely happy as Don
shared.
Blessings to you and family.
Kaz
------------------------------------------------------------------------.
On Thu,
Jul 11, 2019 at 5:20 AM
Nigel
Boos <nigelboos@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for helping out here, with your
memorabilia, Jan.
I look forward to seeing your collection
NB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------.
On Jul
10, 2019, at 7:49 PM,
Don
Mitchell <idmitch@anguillanet.com> wrote:
Hello, Jan,
Thank you, I have received the three
packages sent by “WeTransfer”, and am preparing to add them to the catalogue of
the Abbey School Archives.
They are an amazing collection.
Some of the old items Ladislao has never
included in his Circulars.
If you agree, I would like to send many
of them to him.
There are some of actual Old Boys and
others that illustrate the evolution of the Abbey and the School over the
years.
Some of the more modern ones, like those
of you with Paul Zeven, are interesting and he may be glad of them for inclusion
in the Circulars.
I would be happier if the photos of
persons and places could be of a higher resolution, if that is not too much
trouble.
They can always be zoomed out, if a
viewer wants.
Some of the photos of books include
pages from the inside of the book.
I don’t think the internal pages add to
the impact of seeing a 1960s textbook.
If you could redo those with just a
picture of the outside,
I think that would be useful. Anyone
interested in seeing the inside can always order a copy of the book from one of
the many antiquarian booksellers who specialise in old school textbooks. But, a
view of the outside cover may well bring back memories.
I cannot imagine how you managed through
all these years to save so many bits of MSB memorabilia.
If you have been as thorough a collector
through all the epochs and periods of your life,
I imagine your wife must have wanted to
pull out her hair many times in the past :-)
Best wishes, and looking forward to
hearing from you with any additional items you can send,
Don
MSB
1955-1964
------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jan Koenraadt
Sent: Wednesday,
July 10, 2019 6:13 PM
Dear Don,
I grabbed my scanner and threw some old
stuff on it from Mount St. Benedict and scanned it.
I sent you three batches via Wetransfer,
you must have it now.
You have one week to download te
pictures via the link you get with email.
Inside the pictures the dates en
explanatory text is written.
I need more time to dive into this but have
a lot of other things to do.
Could you please notify on what
resolution you want the things because I mostly work with higher than 12
megapixels = 4-6 MB for each item.
I scaled it down a lot, if possible
below 1 Mb, but if you prefer high resolution I can deliver.
Need to attend work now, much greetings
and I enjoy the project you have undertaken!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan
Koenraadt MSB '63-'67
Empower With Art <empowerwithart@gmail.com>
Jul 11 at 9:39 AM
Wow, Don,
That is a lot of moving.
Did any of the leaves survive?
You know there is a kind of flat leaf
that grows even between the pages inside the book.
I cannot remember the name.
On one of my visits back to Trinidad,
Winston Kerry took me to the St Augustine Tennis Club where he plays tennis and
one of his friends with his son told me of the growing leaf in the book story.
Regards....Kaz
---------------------------------------------------------------------.
Empower With Art <empowerwithart@gmail.com>
Jul 11 at 7:51 AM
George,
looks like your dear Dad did not wish to
have too many physical lingering memories in his completely new habitat.
Such is life.
Every one of us has our own personal
reasons why we do things.
Just love unconditionally and cherish
each other at the end of the day.
That is the memories we ultimately take
with us.
Love you Brother........
Kaz
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Op 11-7-2019
om 06:08 schreef Empower With Art:
Thanks Jan and Don for enabling this
latest major advancement in recording and maintaining our legacy,
George
------------------------------------------------------------------------.
From: Jan Koenraadt <jankoenraadt@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, 11 July 2019
19:23
Dear Don,
I shall resend you today with WeTransfer
new scans of my old study books of the Abbey School in higher resolution
without the inside pages as you asked.
And just now I resend part of the old
pictures I have in higher resolution, say somewhere between 4-7 Mb each
picture.
I spent the whole day searching my old
stuff.
There is this problem:
I sent in 2008 and 2009 a handful of
pictures in low resolution for the Circulars.
I kept a copy of what I sent on my
harddrive.
Those copies I sent you yesterday.
Now 10 years later, where are the
pictures in high resolution?
I ploughed through my hardrive (you know
those cheap 4 Terabyte hard drives can be very large!) but I couldn't find them
all yet.
This weekend I have to go to France and
will be back mid August.
If I find any more, I will send them
also, but for now, this is what I have.
No problem if you wish to share it with
Kazim's collection and others for the Circulars and all.
Only me and my sisters are left, who's
gonna shout me?
I will keep on looking, so maybe once in
a while I will send more of this.
It pleases that you people enjoy it all!
You know, my family never figured out
how come such a healthy looking guy like my brother Thijs got cancer and died.
Via the Circulars I learned that brother
Edward Theunissen also died of cancer at Mount at the age of 50.
He also had the cancer type where there
is no source, it is all over the body.
That happens when you get radiation from
some source like pollution or so or atomic radiation.
I remember in about June 1966 there was
a strange cloud above the Abbey School.
It was a very elongated cloud snake like
with a reddish colour, originating from the horizon in the direction of San
Fernando.
First I thought it might be a fallout of
the last French atomic explosion in June 1966 on the Bikini atoll in the
Pacific.
But it might be that such a cloud
doesn't travel that way all to the Abbey School.
So maybe it might be an explosion af a
chemical plant in the South of Trinidad?
My brother and brother Edward were
helping out surveying the schoolboys that year.
That evening at seven o'clock Father
Cuthbert ordered everybody to go to bed and skip studies.
That gave my brother and Edward a free
evening.
While I was putting on pyjama's in the
dormitory my brother passed me joyfully climbing up the ladder to the roof of
the Abbey school where he spent the evening watching this strange cloud.
Maybe one was facing the cloud and the
other opposite; maybe my brother got the full blast and therefore died earlier.
I don't know.
He was up the roof with four monks.
I haven't heard about the two other
monks what happened to them.
Don't know who they are.
They were local guys.
In the Netherlands we have this website www.delpher.nl where you
can search in published newspapers in the Netherlands, Indonesia and Surinam
and the Antilles from about 1650 until 1995.
You search in the original printed text.
It is a true phenomenon but it is there
and it is true.
Just to show, you want to see Thijs on
the passenger list embarking to Port of Spain in 1956? His initials are M.A.
Koenraadt.
Watch it here
What I want to ask, do you guys know
about anything similar of the newspapers of Trinidad?
Is it possible to find any news article
about this strange cloud over Trinidad from San Fernando to the Abbey School?
Does anybody know a equivalent website
where I can plough through the newspaper articles of the sixties?
The sort of cloud I mean is snake like
as in the top of this picture, not the explosion part but one of the arms.
And then reddish like in the explosion
part.
Keep well, I have the same fun you have
and enjoy the project you are undertaking!
Much greetings
Jan Koenraadt
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EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz, kertesz11@yahoo.com, if you would like to be in the
circular’s mailing list subscribe and you would be getting an issue every week
for only 52.oo usd.
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Photos:
08LK0010AACLKE, Alberto
Ache and Ladislao Kertesz
09GI0117SCOUTS, Friendship
badge
59UN0027MIQ, Newspaper
cutouts of Venezuelans arriving in Maiquetia Airport.
19AB0001ABA, Aaron
Bacchus
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